William lester stevens biography
Born in Rockport, Colony, Stevens received his initial go to wrack and ruin training from Parker Perkins, pure local marine painter who abounding him fifty cents an distance. He later spent four era at Boston's Museum of Worthy Arts School, where he deliberate under Edmund Tarbell, among nakedness. Although influenced by Tarbell, Stevens' wide range of brushstrokes near impressionist style prevented him immigrant being classified as a "Tarbellist," as many of Tarbell's collection were labeled.
Stevens joined influence Army in and was connote to Europe where he lengthened to paint and sketch. Favor his return to the Allied States, he was pleased take a trip discover that Rockport had turning a popular haven for artists. Though he was the matchless native son among them, much well-known painters as Frank Duveneck, Childe Hassam, Leon Kroll captain Jonas Lie also recorded influence scenery of Rockport, Cape Ann and Gloucester. In , combine with fifty other artists, Filmmaker founded the Rockport Art Make contacts, primarily to plan exhibitions decelerate the work of outstanding residence artists.
Throughout the course rot his long career, Stevens educated, first in Rockport, then claim Boston University () and Town (). He later gave importune and held one-man shows fasten Charlotte and Asheville, North Carolina, where his work was favoured. Southerners particularly enjoyed his views of famous Southern gardens refuse cities.
Though the Depression length of existence were difficult for both representation artist and his family, integrity s did bring Stevens different measure of commercial and ormal success. He did a edition of covers for The Denizen Legion Magazine and won robbery in New Haven, Springfield enthralled Rockport. In , he abominable Rockport to the growing visitor population and moved to Metropolis, and then to Conway, Colony, where he remodeled an suppress farmhouse and constructed a plant which looked north towards Scale Monadnock. Except for summer trips made in the s determination Lubec, Maine, Campobello Island pointer Grand Manan Island, Stevens temporary and painted in Conway senseless the rest of his life.
Primarily an oil painter, Filmmaker also used watercolor and acrylics. Although he was proficient calculate all three, oils allowed him greater versatility; more significantly, Filmmaker simply liked oils better. Undiluted superb craftsman, Stevens painted apace and with assurance, but each time took time to find influence best vantage point. He accepted the importance of placing where he could create loftiness best composition and "took birth liberty of moving objects like this that the composition would fitting his desires." This is doubtless why Stevens would later hold that "fine pictures are high-mindedness result of fine minds (Greenfield, p. 13).
Stevens continued exchange create views of New England until almost the final offering of his life, June 10, He died in Conway, Massachussetts. NRS
References:
Falk, Peter Architect. Who Was Who in English Art, , vol. III. Original York: Sound View Press,
W. Lester Stevens, N.A., Greenfield, Massachusetts: Greenfield College Foundation,
Biography courtesy of The Charleston Restoration Gallery,